Bram Cohen on BitTorrent's Future

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Bram Cohen on BitTorrent's Future

Ace programmer Bram Cohen denies he is leaving BitTorrent – and says he's busier than ever positioning the company to totally own online video downloads.

In an exclusive e-mail interview, Cohen responds to the rumors that he is stepping down – and offers new details about BitTorrent's forthcoming video distribution platform.

It was rumored last week that Cohen, BitTorrent's CEO and co-founder, was about to quit.

But "it's definitely not true," said director of communications Lily Lin. "Bram is very much here, and here to stay."

Indeed, BitTorrent seems to be expanding faster than ever. As reported on Monkey Bites blog, Cohen's San Francisco company is forming distribution partnerships with several major film and television studios, including 20th Century Fox, MTV Networks, G4, Palm Pictures and Paramount Pictures. In May 2006, BitTorrent teamed up with Warner Bros. to distribute films and televisions shows online.

The company also said last week it has secured an additional $20 million in funding from Accel Partners and Doll Capital Management to make the video store a reality.

Wired News: First of all, would you care to comment on the rumors about you leaving the company?

Bram Cohen: You can't believe everything you read in the tabloid rags. We had a big laugh about that one around the office.

WN: Can you offer some details on compatibility and hardware requirements for video content downloaded with the new service? Will there be a special software player, digital rights management, cross-platform compatibility?

BC: We're rolling out with some content DRM'd, using Windows DRM, at the insistence of our content partners. We're very concerned about the usability problems DRM introduces, and are educating our content partners about the lost commercial opportunity.

WN: So, as it stands right now, the downloaded video content will only work on Windows software?

BC: At the initial launch, yes, the content from the studios and networks will be protected with Windows DRM.

WN: Will there be any seeding requirements that users will need to consider when sharing video content from BT.com? Will there be any price breaks or discounts for people who seed well above the minimum?

BC: Our software will handle transfers almost invisibly. It does a reasonable amount of transferring in a way that doesn't interfere with anything else the user might be doing, to make as simple and friendly an experience as possible. As is built into the BitTorrent protocol, users who upload more will tend to get better download rates than users who upload less, so users with fast upload capabilities will get better performance, but that's not something they have to worry about beyond what kind of net connection they get.

WN: Any worries about the potential backlash of users who are wary of large media corporations using their bandwidth and distributed resources to turn a profit?

BC: Peer distribution allows for more content, at higher quality, than could possibly be distributed otherwise, and that's a big win for end users. It isn't like end-user resources are being used with no benefit to them.

Users are happy to contribute bandwidth as long as it's part of a service they want and doesn't interfere with their general web-browsing experience. We've got technology to automatically reduce transfer rates when the user's net connection is being used for something else, so only spare bandwidth is used.

WN: Do you think BitTorrent has gained enough mass-market recognition to be a destination for people to find and download online video? Right now, they can get movies from Amazon, Apple or Wal-Mart. Why will they use BitTorrent?

BC: Currently, when people want high-quality video they turn on the TV or get a DVD. The space is wide open in terms of gaining mindshare for an online download site. We're going to excel both in having a comprehensive catalog so people can reliably find something they want and in having a simple, friendly consumer experience.

WN: Do you think your plan will dispel some of the conceptions media execs have about BitTorrent – that it's just a tool for piracy?

BC: Those preconceptions have already been mostly overcome. BitTorrent from the beginning has been a useful general-purpose tool, tailored for people who want to publish their own content out in the open, and enough people have done technical due diligence for the community at large to make that realization.

Back when there was some stigma to anything related to peer-to-peer, there were some amusing stories of companies having an official policy of not using any peer-to-peer technology at all, but some sysadmin would surreptitiously use BitTorrent for internal distribution when it was clearly warranted.

WN: Do you have any plans for implementation of BitTorrent software on other platforms? Web apps? Mobile apps? Widgets?

BC: Delivery of high-quality content is something that can benefit all platforms. We're working on making BitTorrent come preinstalled on many embedded devices, as one of the basic services they support in the same class as web browsers.

WN: Where do you see file-sharing going in one year? Five years?

BC: We're going to see everything continue to become more web-based, and the special status of high-quality video files and other large files as somehow different will go away. The current limitations on distributing them will cease to exist.